tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-282910022014-10-03T21:20:54.188+13:00Where is Tonga...and who the heck is Joey Manfredo?Western PA boy takes a turn at life in the South Pacific's Kingdom of Tonga: Royal Titles, Kava Hangovers, Elephantiasis Jokes, Sheep Ribs and General Hilarity Ensues...TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147911711203420022006-05-10T13:20:00.000+13:002006-05-18T16:56:18.830+13:00Earthquake Hits Tonga...Tongans Don't Care....This article appeared in the Courier Express and Main Line Life. As news of the 7.8-calibur earthquake that hit Tonga shook the Western news world, we barely felt an aftershock in Vava’u. Perhaps all of our emotions were spent during the 90-second “mofuike” (mo-fu-ee-kay).At 2 am on Thursday, May 4th—Crown Prince Tupou To’a’s birthday, a national holiday—I laid down to sleep after celebrating my TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1148083057253075172006-04-30T12:50:00.000+13:002006-05-20T13:02:00.763+13:00Ako LesoniWe held two weeks of hours-long practices to travel to the village of Longomapu to put on a series of short religious-themed plays for the people of that village. A lot of hand-dancing ‘a la Napoleon Dynamite’s “happy hands club.” That is huge here in Tonga. I’m an equally poor hand and foot dancer.I appeared in the “Jesus Boat” skit in which we pretend to row a boat while sitting on the floor. TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147911589697950072006-04-18T13:18:00.000+13:002006-05-18T17:11:32.456+13:00Kava Culturekava (piper methysticum): 1 a pepper species that is ubiquitous in the SouthPacific; 2 a liquid strained from the ground root of the kava plant, whenconsumed causes a mouth-numbing and mild tranquilizing affect. 3 the lifebloodof the Kingdom of Tonga. Where there is life in Tonga’s 171 sparsely populated islands, there is kava. From bestowing a royal title, to starting a small business to TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147911334283794392006-04-01T13:14:00.000+13:002006-05-18T17:20:51.976+13:00Rain (with permission from Prince)This article appeared in the Courier Express and Main Line Times...April Showers-DuBois, Pennsylvania, you’ve got nothing on the Kingdom of Tonga’s wet season. I write this on a deservedly beautiful, sunny, “living in tropical paradise” day—one that Tonga earned for enduring four weeks of rain.Not to imply that this was all-day, every-day rain. Some days provided a constant mist, as though we TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147911462485405412006-03-03T13:16:00.000+13:002006-05-18T17:23:49.456+13:00A Fish's Nightmare....I’m a fish’s nightmare. This should not be confused with me being a fish’s “worst” nightmare. The way I think, a worst nightmare would have to do with death—that of the fish, or its close friends or family.I, am a nightmare. I’m this big land creature—goggles, flippers and snorkel making me look monster-esque—chasing you with a sharp metal object and the intent to kill. Scary shit. However, with TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147911386304513872006-02-12T13:15:00.000+13:002006-05-20T13:41:33.106+13:00Mourning the Death of Tessa HoranHey ya’all. Somber email coming from Tonga. Tessa Horan, a volunteer from the new group who had just moved to Tu’anuku in Vava’u two weeks ago, was killed in a shark attack. She was 24 and from New Mexico. She was to be a teacher at a local primary school and work on projects with the youth in her village.Her evening routine was to play soccer on the beach with the guys from her village and TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147911240787378342005-12-25T13:12:00.000+13:002006-05-18T17:41:29.636+13:00Blue ChristmasAnother Christmas has come and gone…for many of you. I’m still waiting for Kris Kringle, Rudolf and Jack Frost to come ho-ho-ho-ing, glowing and tap-tap-tapping at my window.It was appropriate that the holiday fell on the Sabbath, because Christmas is just another Sunday in the Kingdom of Tonga. Of course, the green and red flicker of holiday lights can be seen in one or two homes and a gift is TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147911038226903422005-12-11T13:08:00.000+13:002006-05-18T17:59:04.983+13:00Halloween, "The Night of 3 Dinners," Thanksgiving, and everything in-between...12/11/2005Much time has passed, so here is my Halloween-to-now summary:Halloween isn’t really celebrated here, but I did help a fellow volunteer who teaches at an elem. school run a Halloween party. We had bobbing for Mangos (how pacific is that?), pin the wart on the witches nose, a dress-up contest and a Halloween movie. For never experiencing Halloween, some of the kids really got it. About TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147911146998615082005-11-01T13:11:00.000+13:002006-05-18T17:29:49.036+13:00Mourning an Aunt Through Tongan PutuArticle Appeared in the Courier-Express and Main Line Times...My aunt, Venetia “Nini” Manfredo, passed this September. Most reading this piece knew or at least met Nini, who was very active in the DuBois community as a parishioner at St. Joseph’s church and a dedicated volunteer at Central Catholic High School. I feel safe in assuming that many of you were in attendance as the family viewed and TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147910486357691802005-10-21T13:00:00.000+13:002006-05-18T18:11:20.316+13:00Killing PigsSo, a couple of the guys in the youth group escort me to the shore. Expecting a nice salt water breeze, i’m instead greeted w/ the smell of scorched hair, as I see a gas tank hooked up to a flame thrower that one guy is shooting at a pig as others scrape at it w/ a shovel to clean off all of the hair. Usually, w/ smaller pigs, they just dip the pig in boiling water and then scratch furiously w/ TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147910416432865112005-10-21T12:57:00.000+13:002006-05-18T18:17:19.113+13:00Joey Paddlin' in the Pacific...Times that I wished that I were a better swimmer:-During summers at treasure lake when Sinfelt, Gavazzi, Owens and Benny would swim to the ropes and taunt me b/c I couldn’t swim there as fast as them.-In Magic Molly Moll’s pool, when she and Doug taunted me for doing the “Joey Paddle.” -Yesterday, when a few volunteers and myself rented a little dingy boat and motored to the hidden Mariners Cave,TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147910856967682802005-10-02T13:05:00.000+13:002006-05-18T18:04:39.970+13:00Malo e Lelei from Vava'uArticle appeared in Main Line Life...“Malo e lelei,” or greetings from the “land where time begins:” the Kingdom of Tonga. Nestled just beyond the International Dateline in the South Pacific, I’m among the 100,000 Tongans and 50 Peace Corps Volunteers who are the first in the world to welcome each new day.Fitting, because it’s a new day in my life, similar, in ways, to the transition of my first TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1147902400997036482005-10-01T10:40:00.000+13:002006-05-18T18:22:20.116+13:00Moving in....What’s up everyone? A lot new here in Tonga, as I’ve been at my site, the village of Makave (600 people, large by Tongan standards. Mind you that only 16K peeps live in Vava’u, 100K in all of Tonga. More Tongans live abroad than live in their own country.) for one week now. Quite quite interesting to say the least.I have a really nice house by Peace Corps Vava’u standards. It’s a small, 3 room TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1148621597640033732005-09-30T18:18:00.000+13:002006-05-26T18:33:17.646+13:00Break Out the Bills...it's a KonisetiundefinedTonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1148624903683056302005-07-19T19:22:00.000+13:002006-05-26T19:43:30.866+13:00Swimming Cave in HavelulikuOur first homestay village was about a five-minute walk from the beach. About 50 feet from the sand was a cave, in which was a nice, dark freshwater swimming hole. You had to take candles inside to see anything. A cool experience. The echo, lightly lit cave, slimy walls you could dive off of.Anyway, here we are emerging from the deep...TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1148623011809492972005-07-17T18:46:00.000+13:002006-05-26T19:09:25.923+13:00Who's Goin' Chicken Huntin'?My first experience staying with a Tongan family. It was tough at first. Bed bugs. Cold taro and corned beef for dinner. My stomach started to disagree with me.Bright spot: the first night, PCV Dan and I heard a ruckus outside. Went out to see what was what and saw that our homestay brother, Samu (big dude) and his friends were shooting chickens out of trees with slingshots. When they fell, the TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28291002.post-1148091438835686482005-07-07T15:14:00.000+13:002006-05-20T15:22:18.420+13:00Arrival in TongatapuAfter the half-day flight, we rock into Tonga. Here is a photo of our group as we disembark from the plane. L to R: ME, Diane Hanley (has lived all over the world, but most recently from Colorado), Maggie May (who quit after one week and is from Louisiana...and, can't close this parentheses without saying it...Rod Stewart), David Rosen (Indianapolis), Kristina Hicks (Missouri), Garry Crain (“My TonganJoeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16251868197185552792noreply@blogger.com0